Ask LH: What's The Best Way To Save All The Useful Articles I Come Across?

Dear Lifehacker, I love finding different tips and tricks online, but I often find that many of them are most useful days, months, even years down the line. What's the best way to save and organise all this cool stuff so I can actually find it when I need it?

Sincerely,

Lost in the Web

Dear LW,

You have a lot of options to choose from, and it really depends on how you want to organise everything. Some methods are also better if you want offline access — say, for a collection of camping recipes — while other work great if you don't mind just saving the links. Either way, the real trick is organisation so you don't have to sift through everything you've ever read. Here are a few different ways you can save all that stuff.

Use A Read It Later Service With Tagging

If the type of content you want to save is mostly reading material, then your best bet is to use one of the read it later services services like Readability or Pocket that support tagging. Both services have browser extensions (Readability, Pocket) that allow you to quickly save links, and the next step is organisation.

Create a tagging system you'll actually use. In Readability, simply click the "Add Tags" link, and in Pocket, click the pencil icon. For example, if you're collecting a bunch of camping-related links, create a camping tag, then maybe separate those even further with tags like "gear" or "recipes" so you can instantly find what you're looking for.

The benefit of this system is two-fold. First off, Readability and Pocket both work in every operating system, and on pretty much every mobile device so you can save web pages from anywhere. Second, they both offer offline access, so if, for example, you're going camping, you don't have to worry about finding an internet connection so you can read the links you save.

Use A Notebook System Like Evernote Or Springpad

If tagging everything in a read it later service isn't doing the trick for you, a notebook app like Evernote or Springpad might do the trick. These services allow you to create personal notebooks to store links, ideas, and any other reminders you might need.

To use this effectively, you'll want to do two things: create a notebook for each type of link you want to save (for example, a "Camping ideas" notebook), and then tag your links with relevant information as you add them in so you can cross reference if need be. We've walked your through getting the most out of Sprinpad before and the same basic tenets apply to Evernote as well.

However, if you want to use either of these services when you don't have an internet connection, you'll need to take the additional step of copying the relevant information into a note before you go offline. Neither service saves links for offline reading the same way the read it later services do, so you need to actually copy the text you need.

Organise Your Bookmarks So They Actually Make Sense

If webapps and organizational systems are more than you really need, your browsers handy bookmarks feature is still a useful tool to save relevant links as long as you organise them as you go along.

In Firefox, you can do this by tagging your bookmarks, which is built into Firefox itself. When you drop in a new bookmark, add a relevant tag, and it'll organise everything automatically. On Chrome, you can use an extension like Bookmarks Tagger, SuperSorter, or Stashmarks to do the exact same thing. Of course, you can also just make new folders for each type of link you're saving as well.

When all is said and done, it's about picking a system that you'll actually use. The key is that you organise as you save all your links so you're not stuck digging through thousands of animated GIFs when you're looking for that PC build tutorial you saved a year ago.

Cheers,

Lifehacker

Got your own question you want to put to Lifehacker? Send it using our contact tab on the right.

Comments

If you want it to be accessible years later, you should definitely do one of the options that saves your own copy - not just a link - since websites can and do change url structures or disappear all the time.

Instapaper is designed to store links you’d like to read once and then discard.

There’s no limit to how many articles you can store, and your archive of read items is kept indefinitely (unless you delete from it).

But Instapaper isn’t optimized for keeping track of thousands of pages. This isn’t the right tool to collect, categorize, tag, filter, and search the contents of every web page you’ve ever found — for that sort of use, try Pinboard or Evernote.

I think pocket doesn't archive a copy of the page, only the best view and the link. It also syncs the best view to your mobile device. But if the original page went missing, you won't find it when you need. At this point, Diigo does provide a function to archive a complete web page onto their server which is very nice, though the free account is very limited on this, need a paid account

Only logged in users may vote for comments!

Get Permalink

Trending Stories Right Now

Google’s aptly named AI helper, Google Assistant, is poised to have a great year in 2019. Not only will the digital assistant be spreading to numerous devices old and new, but there are a host of new features coming, too, several of which were shown off at CES the week before last.

MyRepublic just smashed the price barrier for super-fast NBN. For a limited time, you can get the top-tier Unlimited Premium plan with speeds of up to 100Mbps for just $79.95 per month - a saving of $10. Here are the details!